Thomas J. Galbraith

Thomas J. Galbraith, 1861"For what reason we have commenced this war I will tell you. It is on account of Major Galbraith."

Little Crow in a letter to Henry Sibley, 1862.

Thomas J. Galbraith was an American politician. In 1857, he signed the Republican version of the Minnesota State Constitution. In the wake of Lincoln’s election in November 1860, Republicans swept the federal jobs in the Northern Superintendency of Indian Affairs and the thirty-six-year-old Galbraith was appointed Sioux Agent.  As an agent appointed by the U.S. government, he was charged with fulfilling treaty obligations to the Dakota and with enforcing Indian affairs code, including regulating the traders.
 
By the spring of 1862, fed up with the inefficiencies of the Indian system in which he was enmeshed, Galbraith resigned his post as Agent, then agreed to hold his resignation until after the annuity payment was made. Throughout the summer he tried to deal with an impossible situation. When annuity payments were delayed, he tried to convince the Dakota to accept greenbacks rather than the gold promised them. He kept the few government rations he had left locked in a warehouse at the Lower Agency and he tried to convince traders to extend more credit to Dakota clients for much-needed food. 
 
On August 18, Galbraith and a group of Civil War recruits known as the Renville Rangers took off from the Upper Agency. Galbraith believed he would deliver the recruits to Fort Snelling, return to the reservation to make the annuity payment, then accept a leadership position in a Minnesota regiment as thanks for his recruiting efforts. 
 
News of the outbreak of war overtook Galbraith and his recruits at St. Peter on August 19. The Renville Rangers changed course and marched to the aid of Fort Ridgely. Meanwhile, Galbraith’s wife, Henrietta, and their two children were being led to safety from their home at the Upper Agency by the Wahpeton Dakota leader Anpetutokeca (John Other Day). Galbraith helped defend Fort Ridgely and was wounded at the battle of Birch Coulee. After the war Galbraith was exonerated in two congressional investigations into allegations that his conduct at the Agency brought on the U.S.-Dakota War. Galbraith died in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1909.

Theme:

1862

Topics:

U.S. Government
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Resources for Further Research

Primary

Anderson, Gary Clayton and Alan R. Woolworth, eds. Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988.

Secondary

Carley, Kenneth. The Dakota War of 1862. 2nd ed. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001.

Clodfelter, Michael. The Dakota War: The United States Army Versus the Sioux, 1862-1865. NC: McFarland, 1998.

Dahlin, Curt. The Dakota Uprising: A Pictorial History. Minneapolis: Beaver's Pond Press, 2009.

Glossary Terms

Indian Agent

Key People

Anpetutokeca (John Other Day)
Anpetutokeca (John Other Day)
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Anpetutokeca (John Other Day)

Anpetutokeca (John Other Day)

"When I gave up the war path and commenced working the earth for a living I discarded all my former habits.... My wife died during the winter which left my heart very sad. It was very hard for me to learn the white man’s ways, but I was determined to get my living by cultivating the land and raising stock."
Anpetutokeca (John Other Day), 1869
Anpetutokeca, also known as John Other Day, was born in about 1819 in present-day Nicollet County. He was a leader of a small band of Wahpeton Dakota farmers living on the reservation near the Upper Agency with his wife, Roseanne. For rescuing more than 60 residents of the Upper Agency, Other Day was received as a hero in St. Paul. He served as a scout for Henry Sibley and fought beside white soldiers at the battle of Wood Lake. He died in Dakota Territory in 1869.

View full article: Anpetutokeca (John Other Day)

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

"If we get through this war, and I live, this Indian system shall be reformed."
Abraham Lincoln to Bishop Henry Whipple, September 1862
Born in 1809, Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He led the United States through the Civil War, preserving the Union while ending slavery and promoting economic and financial modernization. As president, he played a critical role during the U.S.-Dakota War and its aftermath.
Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated. He became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator in the 1830s, and a one-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1840s. After losing a Senate race to his arch-rival Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln, a moderate, secured the Republican Party nomination for president in 1860. His election led to seven southern states seceding from the Union and the formation of the Confederate States of America--and eventually to war.
With the Civil War monopolizing the government’s attention, any attempts at reforming the Indian system that Abraham Lincoln might have hoped for simply never materialized. Lincoln dealt directly with the situation in Minnesota after the U.S.-Dakota War, calling for a review of the trial transcripts of 303 Dakota men sentenced to death. Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but 39 of the convicted men.
If Lincoln had stepped in earlier to address his administration’s handling of Indian affairs, events in Minnesota might have taken a different course.

View full article: Abraham Lincoln